


mirrored

by fishycorvid



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergences are Accidental, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, GIVE IT A DAMN CHANCE, Gen, POV Second Person, References to Character Death, Reflection, Stream of Conscienceness, i just searched my google doc and i mention sazed precisely twice, oh hey i guess this is technically angsty, spoilers for all of the balance arc, the sazed/taako is barely mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 17:47:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17064305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: you wake up on the roadside, a woman kneeling over you, and something is very wrong.you wake up on the roadside, and you taste your own blood on your tongue, and your nails dig into dusty ground.you wake up on the roadside, and you are more alone than you have been in your life.you wake up on the roadside, and you do not remember how you got here.





	mirrored

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys!! this is a self-indulgent, trailing lil fic that i genuinely hope you guys enjoy :) thank you for reading!

You wake up on the roadside, and your mouth tastes like copper.

You dig your nails into the dusty ground, dry and cracked on the pads of your fingers, and as you lift your head, the realization flashes through you like lightning that you don’t remember how or why you’re here.

When you force your eyes open with a wince (they feel like they’ve been stuck closed for so long now), a second realization hits: someone is kneeling over you. A woman, human, with a round face and hazel eyes and a mouth pulled flat and trembling ever so slightly.

“Who are you?” you ask, own voice unfamiliar in your throat. The woman lets out a sigh of relief and pulls back so she’s regarding you instead of hovering overhead.

“I’m…” she starts, and her mouth quirks sideways and down. “I’m Magia.” The _g_ rasps like an _h_ in her throat, and a voice in your head that knows more about language than you do supplies _magic_.

“Horseshit,” you say, and push yourself to a sitting position, and Magia laughs.

“Believe what you want, friend,” she says back, and rises to her feet, offering a hand towards you. You scrutinize it: smooth, small, pale. And you take it.

* * *

You inherited your slowness to trust from your aunt, just as surely as you inherited your deep bronze skin from a mother that skipped town as soon as you were old enough to understand it, and your dark hair from a father you can’t remember. She’d hold high court in her kitchen, your aunt, and scold you as you tried to make dinner the way she liked. You hadn’t resented her then, and you don’t now. The smell of spices still on your skin when you went to bed each night, the repetitive kneading of the bread, the constant stirring of soup, the burns from the wood-fire oven, the cuts from the sharp knives when they slipped— it was all okay. It was all good. All the other chores were just chores, but the cooking of meals with your aunt, her guiding your hands until you learned to do it on your own… that was good, that was sacred, that was untouchable. If only your memories of her weren’t blurred at the edges. All you remember is this: she wouldn’t hug you, but put a gentle hand on your shoulder when you got nightmares, and tousled your hair with a laugh when you made a particularly good joke, and flicked your ear when you stole the thick, sweet honey she collected and stored away in jars for special occasions. She wouldn’t hug you, but kissed your forehead gently when you had to leave again. That was the last time she touched you at all.

You didn’t understand it then, but you do now.

If you get too close, close enough to hold, you will not be able to let go without ripping and tearing.

* * *

Magia takes you to a nearby inn, and the food is atrocious, and you have to take over and do it all for them. _Honestly,_ you remark to her, and focus in and snap your fingers, lighting the stove fire in a show of idleness. Your magic feels slow. _What kind of amateurs can’t even scramble eggs right? Clearly you’re a woman of class, you surely understand._ You really couldn’t care less if the employees do it right or wrong—food is food, and you have and will live off of worse fare than pre-stirred eggs—but, well, you do have an image to keep up. You don’t even think to ask yourself why, or what that image even is, because Magia laughs fondly, almost familiarly. You almost ask if you know her, or if you _should_ know her, but she seems quiet, preoccupied, as you scrape the eggs off the pan and cut up tomatoes, grate cheese.

“Thank you,” she says, and when she takes a bite, her eyes are bright and approving but not surprised. “You’re good at this, Taako,” she says, and you shrug, dropping the pan into the sink.

“Natch. I mean, come on. Who do you think you’re talking to?” you reply idly, and she chuckles and takes another bite, chews thoughtfully, puts down her fork. She clasps her mug of coffee with both hands— black, but full of sugar. Sharp and hot, but still sweet. It makes sense, somehow, that Magia would like it that way.

“Taako, what would you say to having a… a show?”  
  
It’s a non sequitur, but somehow, that makes sense, too.

* * *

The night before you have to leave again, your aunt is teaching you how to make lavender tea. Soothing and flavorful and just a little sweet.

“Taako?” she asks, left ear flicking to the side the way it does when she’s uncomfortable.

“Yes?” Your hands don’t still; even then, you cooked reflexively.

She sighs and brushes her hand over the counter, flicking away nonexistent dust. “Don’t go with your grandfather, when he comes. You might be young, but you aren’t too young. You learn trades quickly; I’ve been watching you. When you showed up on my doorstep, you knew nothing about cooking. Now you’re— adequate,” she catches herself with a grin, and you laugh, albeit tensely; you know you’re almost as good as she is by now, or at least have enough potential to be so soon. “You know, mediocre. Passable. You could sustain yourself, however joylessly, if you chose to cook in the future.”

You ask, again: “Yes?” Less warbly, back then. Elven accent a little heavier, though. No disguise of absurdity. No need to put on a show.

“Find work. Anywhere you can get it. There are caravans, circuses, troupes. Restaurants. Travelers. Doesn’t matter.”

“I—”

“Taako, how long do you want to be shunted back and forth between relatives who don’t give a damn? My sister— she got sick, real sick, after she had you, and she left. And I know you know that, I just… She was lonely, you know, and scared, and sick, in more ways than you probably understand now. Nobody wants to take responsibility, Taako, but someone has to. It can’t be any of them. It can’t be me, either. I tried for as long as I could, Taako, but I can’t support anyone other than myself, not here. This oven,” she says, and points to it, a hulking clay thing, “is the only valuable thing I own. And it’s not fair, Taako. Not to me. Not to you. Not to anyone else.” She leans backward, and her hands are shaking as she slowly stirs the tea in its small pewter cup, tips it towards her mouth, tastes it.

You close your eyes and knot your fingers together on the counter. “Is it good?”

She sighs and places it back on the counter. “Yeah, Taako,” she says wearily. “It’s pretty fuckin’ good.”

You are thirteen years old.

* * *

The first night of _Sizzle It Up!_ , you stay in your quarters for hours before the show starts. Nobody comes in and checks on you. You have practiced these spells and recipes and lines for hours, for years. You know how to do your own stage makeup, learned over a century ago, though you can’t remember for your life who taught you in that haze of memories. You have always been able to keep yourself company; you have been alone all your life; but you feel lonely now, and it is strange in a way you can’t put your finger on.

You stay in your quarters, and you have nothing to do, so you cast cantrip after cantrip, uselessly lighting up the room and creating tiny flames in your hands and magicking different faces across yours: Magia, Sazed, the man that smiled at you kindly from across the bar, the shopkeep that gave you a discount for no reason on the apples you’d bought for the show, the laughing woman trying to rein in her child racing all over the market district of the nearby town, all just for practice. Mostly they’re accurate, but you look at their faces, or really just your face, and the illusions just look off. Their eyes are too bright or not bright enough. Their muscles are too stiff or too fluid. Their smile curls their lips too far or not far enough.

You are a skilled illusionist, that goes without question, but you feel like maybe you’ve seen better and this isn’t it.

Finally, you look out your window, and it is late afternoon and the show starts at sunset, so you rifle through your trunk of clothing and pull out the rich red satin shirt that drapes well over your shoulders and the black pants that don’t look too awful with flour smudged all over them. You look at the smudged, dirty mirror, and adjust the neckline of your shirt, and, somehow, when you see your reflection, it feels like a punch to the stomach. You have to bite the back of your hand to stop yourself from sobbing, deep in your chest.

And you don’t fucking understand _why._

But the show is a success. Even if you can’t stop thinking about that mirror image.

They love you, _you_ , and you try to convince yourself it is deserved.

* * *

The day your grandfather comes to take you away, back to his farm (you’ve been there twice before, each time around three months in duration. Twelve weeks or so of misery until your cousin or your uncle or some family friend you’ve never heard of or your great-grandmother takes you off his hands, like you’re some heavy box that people can pass off to each other, like that’s okay, like asking them to just hold it themselves would be too much), your aunt is almost vicious to him. The two of you sit on the opposite side of the table as he does, and when you eat lunch together, she stabs her fork against the plate with every bite and the clanks echo around the room like the clashing of swords. When he tries to comfort her, she levels an icy glare at him. She keeps a hand perpetually on your shoulder.

When your grandfather tells you to get in his wagon, you hesitate, and she sighs and tells him to go wait at the front of the house.

“Remember what I told you, Taako,” she tells you, voice casual but eyes staring, intense.

“I know,” you say, and you know your gaze must be steel. “It’ll be okay.”

She laughs, a little sadly, and ruffles your hair before reaching over to the counter and handing you a basket of bread you’d baked together that morning. “Take some food for the road.”

“Thanks,” you whisper, and she smiles wearily, cups your cheek in her calloused hand, and bends down to kiss you on the forehead.

“I’ll miss you, Taako,” she says, quiet, like somebody might be listening.

“You too,” you reply, just as soft.

You start for the door, but she calls you back. “And Taako?”

You pause.

“Watch your—and watch your back, too.”

You nod, and you smile as reassuringly as you can, and you grip the handle of the basket tighter, and you walk out the door into the evening light.

That was the last time you ever saw your aunt.

* * *

Everything works out until it doesn’t.

You have adoring crowds. You have tours across the continent. You travel through cities, through expanses of great wilds you could never have imagined, through places that look like they’ve seen hell and places that look like they’ve never been touched by war or misfortune. You make food and you make people so, so happy with that food, with your smile, with your magic, with your graceful movements across the stage. You have friends. You have sous chef named Sazed who kisses you, laughing gleefully, after good shows. You have draft horses that you secretly slip sugar cubes and that whinny softly at night, a gentle lullaby that you can’t imagine living without. You have a stagecoach with your name on it. You have a show. You have a purpose.

Until you don’t.

Every waking moment, you run through the recipe. Every step. Every ingredient. Garlic chicken. So simple. So _fucking_ simple. And yet.

The movements were natural. Every twist of the hand, every murmured spell, every new component added. How do you fuck up that badly?

* * *

You steal away from your grandfather’s wagon that night when you’re camped out in the halfway point between your aunt’s house and his farm. You quietly pack as his steady breathing crescendos into snores. You fold up your bedroll, take a waterskin from the wagon, put on your sturdiest boots, throw a few pairs of clothes into your bag, and take a loaf of bread. You duck your head for a moment, look around for—for—

You don’t remember.

You are in the woods now, quiet footsteps on damp, fallen leaves. You have traveled for enough of your life that you know there is a city by the river to the west, and if you can just find the river—

There are monsters in every nook and cranny of the world, and they are impossible to avoid.

You remember casting spells, shaky and barely-learned. You are not a wizard yet. You are an elven child who can make a room lighter with a cantrip and clean up salt scattered across the kitchen counter and create water out of thin air and mend torn pants. You can make harmless fire to cook with and not much else, only you remember the giant spider burning up in violent flames, not the little blaze you’ve used to heat water.

It doesn’t make sense. Maybe you’re more magical than you thought. Maybe you’re just lucky. But at any rate, you make it to town, and you cook for any traveling caravan that’ll humor you. You travel with performers, and these are the best and worst years of your life. They teach you how to cast more spells, and how to fall without breaking your legs, and how to do flips, and how to sing, and how to do makeup. Older elves and tieflings and halflings and tabaxis that laugh, rarely unkindly, at your attempts at handstands and rudimentary attempts at transmutation. You travel with mercenaries, too, and you learn to fight with a shortsword. You learn how to drink, and to hustle, and to brawl, but you try the latter once and nearly get yourself killed. The first two, you think, are easier.

You learn how to fall without breaking your legs. You learn how to pick your ass off the ground. You learn how to win a fight without coming to blows.

You apply with stolen money to an institute of magic and you get in. You get in, and you graduate top of your class.

You make friends, of course, but there is a way to these things. Nobody cares what happens to anybody else after they graduate.

You wake up on the side of the road, copper-tasting blood on your tongue. You feel like you haven’t opened your eyes in a long, long time. You feel like you’ve been robbed, but, checking your many pockets later that night, you don’t find any of your possessions missing.

* * *

After things fall apart with _Sizzle It Up!_ , you run. You know how to fall without breaking your legs, and how to get up off the ground after you do.

You bartend and wait tables wherever they’re willing to hire a young elf with too-big ears and shifty eyes and sticky fingers and night terrors, which is most places so long as you keep your head down. You’re pretty sure you’re not that young anymore, but you wouldn’t know it looking in the mirror.

You see an ad nailed to a tree calling for heroes, and something deep in your gut tugs at you. It’s an unfamiliar feeling but you recognize it well enough, somehow. Neverwinter. You don’t know the name, but when you ask a half-orc you meet on the road, they tell you it’s the largest town on the continent. You shrug and ask for a ride. Exactly seven days after you see the ad, one elf, one dwarf, and one human walk into a bar, looking for the same employer. It sounds like the beginning of a racially charged joke, but for once, nobody is laughing when you sit down at the counter together and look each other in the eye. The hubbub of the bar rattles on around you, but you feel stiller than you have in years.

The human, a burly man with absurd sideburns, is the first to talk. “Magnus Burnsides,” he rumbles in a voice that so perfectly matches his face and body that you have to laugh.

“Taako Taaco,” you reply, and a massive hand reaches out to shake your significantly smaller one. You have to laugh at the contrast, and to your surprise, he laughs too. You’re not so used to people laughing with you, these days.

“Merle Highchurch,” the dwarf between you growls out from under your arms—he’s just short enough that his nose barely pokes over the edge of the counter—and you laugh at that too. Something warm curls into your chest, and even when you pull your hand away from the human’s and shove it into your pocket, it doesn’t go away.

That night, looking into the compact mirror you’ve traveled with for years—you can’t let yourself go now, you never know when you’ll get to be back in your rightful place in front of a crowd—you think your reflection is starting to make more sense again.

* * *

Your aunt taught you not to touch too much. You can look, you can like, but once you hold, you cannot let go.

Sleeping in the endless tunnels of Waveecho Cave, you are sure to unfold your bedroll far away from theirs, just in case. Since you can Trance, you sit watch most nights, and through your thin haze of semi-meditation, you can hear the Burnsides guy muttering to himself in his sleep. Something about a wife, a raven, and a chair. You curl your knees closer to your chest in an unconscious action, and resist the absurd urge to put a hand on his shoulder, or, worse, hug him.

There’s no reason this shouldn’t just be another job with some other mercs. You’ve been out on the road with people like these before, more times than you can count.

Except… your magic feels different now. Different in a way it hasn’t been for years.

You can _feel_ it. Humming at your fingertips, sparking across the air, curling under your tongue, hissing out with every exhale and returning on the inhale.

“ABRACA-FUCK-YOU!” you scream at this pretentious Drow elf with an accent that doesn’t quite match yours, and magic rushes out of you like the tide from the beach, and it is the most alive you have felt in weeks, months, years, decades. The light from the Magic Missles gleams back at you in the dark eyes of your companions, and later, when Magnus claps you on the shoulder halfway through another godforsaken tunnel and Merle goes up on tiptoes to pat your hip, you don’t brush them off. The deeper into these caves you go with these people, the more magic you feel, white-hot and pulling at every cell in your body. It pulls towards them, and it pulls forward.

You crouch down on one knee so that you’re eye to eye with a skeleton. Empty sockets, bleached bone, endless grin. Red fabric draped over the cavity of a ribcage, a void where flesh should be. Gingerly, you brush your fingers over the crimson robe, and it feels like your heart is strangling your throat for some desperate, awful, unknowable reason, so you seize hard on the cane poking out of fabric and pull back and away from this terrible dead thing.

And _magic_.

It punches the air out of your chest and it feels like all the blood in your body is being sucked out of you, every ounce of vitality pulled towards this staff until you’re shaking from the loss, and just when you think you can’t take it anymore it rushes back in, sea back to shore, and light is flooding out of you. You breathe, choking and wide-eyed. You are powerless and powerful and the distinction doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.

 _It’s an umbrella,_ you register as an afterthought, not a cane like you thought. You turn it over in your hands, running fingers over lacquered and carefully sculpted wood. It was made lovingly, you can tell that much already, and it already feels warm to the touch even though certainly nobody’s touched it in years. Burnsides and Highchurch give you weird looks, probably because you can feel all your hair standing on end, but not laughing. You don’t feel much like laughing either. It fits perfectly in your grip, like it was made for the exact shape of your fingers and palm, and somehow that makes you feel sick.

Eventually, you brush the thought aside. It’s gotten a lot easier to do that recently.

* * *

Phandalin burns. You can see your own reflection in the glass. It looks all wrong.

* * *

“Welcome, the three of you, to the Bureau of Balance,” says the woman with dark skin and light hair, and for a second you have to prop yourself up on your umbrella, just quick and subtle enough that nobody seems to notice. Her voice sounds familiar in a way you can’t place, but then you remember: pale face and nervous smile and slim hands and hazel eyes, but that can’t be right. Their voices are so similar it takes you aback for a second, but then, again, you brush the thought aside.

“I’m but a simple idiot wizard,” you tell her, spinning the umbrella between your fingers.

You can see her brows furrow for just a second. “No, don’t sell yourself short.” So confident, like she knows it, like it’s a fact. But you can’t even remember your childhood home, or your grandpa’s name, or, fuck, even your _aunt’s_ name. Magnus and Merle sometimes slip away too if you’re not concentrating hard enough. Your own spells drain through your cupped fingers like water. Recipes, magic, names, conversations, languages. You just can’t—well. It hardly matters now, does it?

So, “No, I appreciate it, but I’m comfortable with where I’m at.” She tilts her head at you, and you tap your nails against the handle of the umbrella and cock an eyebrow, like, _Well? Move it along._

 _I’m comfortable with where I’m at._ Are you, though? You forget.

* * *

The thing about life is that it changes.

The thing about time is that it passes.

You fight. You cast. You very nearly die. A few times, somewhere in the middle, you do die. Something about it is familiar. You very nearly die. You cast. You fight.

* * *

You remember.

It’s like looking in the mirror back in the stagecoach a decade ago. This time, you cannot hold back your tears.

You feel like you’re on the roadside again, dust and the copper taste of blood in your mouth, dry dirt under your nails. You want to throw things. You want to hurt instead of be hurt.

You want your sister. You want to look at your reflection without needing a mirror.

You are Taako, and you are more alone than you have ever been in your entire life.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! my tumblr is @chaosssy if you're interested in hitting me up to talk about taz or whatever else. please drop a kudos or comment if you enjoyed this, and thanks again <3


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